"Heinrich and Wolfgang, you each owe me a beer," he announced. "Kiefer, by now you owe me the whole tavern. But I'll settle for a pork Schnitzel. No gristle, you understand!"
"Well?" Noelle asked, after they left the tavern.
Anse shook his head. "It's weird. What I can't figure out is whether Ivarsson is acting on his own, or whether Kagg gave him instructions."
"Probably both," Noelle said shrewdly. "One thing I found out before we left is that Ivarsson's been Kagg's right-hand man since forever. Runs in the whole family—both families—it seems. Kind of like old feudal retainers, updated some."
"Um. So what you're saying is that Kagg would have given him some general guidelines, and would then rely on Ivarsson to figure out the footwork."
"Pretty much. I think what's happening is that Gustavus Adolphus told Kagg to see if we could handle the situation—and give us the leeway to do so."
Anse sighed, took off his cap, and ran fingers through his hair. Wishing there wasn't so much gray up there.
I'm too damn old for this—and it's still way over my pay grade.
But . . . there it was.
"Or the rope to hang ourselves with. Okay, so be it. Let's head over to Blumroder's."
Once they were within sight of Blumroder's shop, it was clear as day that Ivarsson wasn't the only one with his own inside sources of information. Two very hard-looking men—Jaeger, from their clothing—were standing guard outside the door. And all the windows had been shuttered.
Just to make things perfect, the shutters all had firing slits—and Anse could see musket barrels poking out of two of them.
In fact . . .
He scanned the whole street, up and down. All of the gun shops were shuttered—and he could see musket barrels in at least four of the windows. Even his brother-in-law Pat had the shutters up.
"Swell," he muttered. "One gunfight at the Suhl corral, coming up."
He headed for the entrance to Blumroder's shop. Anse didn't see any point in talking to Pat until he knew where things stood with the central figure in the situation. Noelle followed, a few steps behind.
He wasn't sure the Jaeger standing guard at the door would even let him in. But, as he approached, that problem became a moot point. Blumroder himself emerged from the shop, carrying a flintlock rifle, and with a grim expression on his face.
Out of the corners of his eyes, Anse could see several of the shuttered windows of the shops on the street opening a little wider and, he was pretty sure, two more musket barrels peeking out. Fortunately, none of the weapons seemed to be pointed at him. So far. Directly, at least. But it wouldn't take more than a second for that situation to change.
"Yes, Herr Hatfield?" asked Blumroder. Despite the expression on his face, his tone was courteous.
Anse didn't see any point in beating around the bush. He stuck his thumb over his shoulder, more-or-less pointing backward.
"First, I'm pretty sure an attack is going to be launched on you. The Swedish garrison will probably be involved."
"An attack has already been launched. Three shots were fired into my shop last night, through an open window in the rear. They barely missed me—and they did injure one of my apprentices. Fortunately, the wound was minor."
Anse had heard the shots himself, as it happened. He simply hadn't thought much of it, because there were often shots being fired on that street. Just about every gunmaker had a firing range as part of his establishment.
A firing range of sorts, at least. For Anse, accustomed to uptime firing ranges, the distances involved were ridiculously short—not more than ten feet, usually. The purpose of the ranges was simply to check a new gun's reliability, not its accuracy. Even with the new flintlock muskets, accuracy still ranked at the bottom of the list, when it came to the qualities looked for in seventeenth-century weapons.
"That would have probably been some of the people in the Committee of Correspondence," he guessed.
"Almost certainly," replied Blumroder. "Not even the drunken swine in the Swedish garrison would have missed, so closely did the would-be murderers stand to the window."
He jerked his head toward the Jaeger at the door. "You can be quite certain they will not miss, once they track down the culprits," he said coldly. "The training we get as members of the Suhl militia is not bad, either."
"There's not going to be any `tracking down of culprits,' Blumroder." Anse's tone was every bit as cold. He turned and motioned Noelle forward. "Ms. Murphy is now in charge, here in Suhl. She has the documents from our President to verify that. And she's placed me in military command. So I'm declaring martial law. Which includes assuming authority over the city militia, by the way."